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frankspin

What has everyone's success been with the N standard?

I'm thinking of converting my wireless over to N and was curious to if anyone has had positive success with doing this. I know that speeds vary a lot depending on environment but if the general consensus is that it's not worth it I don't want to waste money on it.

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5 replies
barkerja

It really depends on how and what you use your network for. If it's just general internet usage you won't see much (if any) of a change. However, if you're transferring lots of data between devices on your network then that's where you will see your largest gains.
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frankspin

It'd be getting used to help set up a media centric network, having a storage array acting as a primary file server for the htpc & laptops.

I'd wire everything over gigabit but it's not conducive to my current living situation.
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barkerja

Then you would most certainly see an improvement, but even Wireless-N is too slow to stream HD content, gigabit ethernet is your best option (which the DIR-655 includes).
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qyiet

A quick real world test on my home network with a PC about 10m from the AP and a single wall in the way gave a sustained trasfer rate of 20% of the "130mpbs" connection. So a little under 3 MB per second (or 26Mbps in ISP parlance).

As stated before, the slow point here may be the server.. but 20% of what a wifi connection thinks its speed is seems about normal to me.
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qyiet

I've deployed 802.11n at my home and at 3 sites for work. Work usage is mostly for web browsing, where as at home it's streaming media.

The connection speeds are faster, but I do sometimes still get video stutter on my home connection. Although I believe this is acually my server not behaving rather than the wifi as I don't get this on internet streaming services using similar bandwidth video.

At work the big gains have been in coverage. One site that had two APs replaced (one covering each floor ) has had one fail. The coverage on the floor that it failed on is still better than when it was using two 802.11G APs.

One bugbear I hit was with a 802.11n NIC. The stability of the connection on that one PC was terrible till I updated it to the latest drivers. However if you are going to all new gear you (in theory) shouldn't hit that.
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